Web log - My work in France

Select which year you would like to read:

2007 - The beginning
2008 - Using the light
2009 - For the Owls
2010 - And then there were Mice

2007 - The beginning - 16th July - 5th Aug

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on the photo.

Recently I was asked by someone that had seen my work, whether I would be interested in going over to France and work on their 300 year old cottage. Naturally I said yes and planned a 3 week trip there.

My new client brought the cottage some years ago but due to personal reasons he wasn't able go over, his health also prevents him from doing a lot of the work. The cottage is located at the end of a remote dirt road in Calanhel. Callac being the closest town.

As a general builder/carpenter he wanted me to undertake most of the work. The cottage is only around 50 square metres, there is an upstairs but head room is limited. Previously to me arriving my client had to organise services to the cottage. It had no water feed and limited electricity. There wasn't even provisions for bodily waste. Thankfully before my arrival he had a septic tank installed and a bathroom fitted.

His idea was to keep the downstairs semi open planed. The bathroom is situated in the middle of the buildings lower level. To the left a very dated old kitchen and the right is to become the lounge. Upstairs he wanted 2 bedrooms. In anticipation he had stairs built and shipped over as the access to the 1st floor was via a very old, rotten, unsafe stair well to the left corner of the property. No good if someone in the other bedroom needed the loo in the night and had to trail through his bedroom whilst he is sleeping.

We started out looking at the poorly fitted stairs. My client asked me to cut the long stringers down as they were a tripping hazard. There isn't much room between the wall and stairs as you can see in the picture. So cutting off a few inches, seemed like we gained a foot. Before I did this I unscrewed the two screws holding the stairs to the beams, adjusted and aligned the stairs square. I fitted some battens for the stairs to sit on for a safer fit then placed the stairs back, fixing with building adhesive and 8 screws.

The stairs got quite a bit of attention. Timber in France is of poor quality, from any place we found any. So doing my best, which included hours of sanding, I made a newel post and hand rail. I also took the time to remove, one at a time, the screws that hold the treads on. Counter sinking them back in with room for a plug to fill the hole. This makes it more pleasant to the eye, as the plug hides the screw head.

Upstairs the client wanted 2 rooms. With stairs now in the centre we devised a plan of a small landing which will eventually have a cupboard with the doors to each side for the rooms.

The building timbers are of a different size in France, plus the client had already brought plywood to face the frames with. Taking this into account I marked out and screwed down the nail plates. Framing the dividing walls was challenging, as there was nothing to fix to above 500mm from floor level. I had to somehow fix to a roof truss. Bear in mind this is a 300 year old house. The walls are made up of 2' stone, walls plastered with cow muck and the roof truss's are built from very rough cut timber, straight from an oak log. None of the timbers are straight or square. The pitch of roof differs not only from each side but along the same run.

After a drink and a chat, I set about taking careful measurements, to work out what size we will need the noggins that connect the frame to the truss's. Finally I get there, a very near perfectly plumb frame with rock solid strength. Near perfect will do right? It's a wonky house so I'm just adding to its character?

I asked the client if he had thought about insulation in the walls. He was all to happy too hear about it's sound absorbing properties. The person he plans to holiday with has a very loud snore. The more of this stuff the better he says. Most of the wires have been laid by the sparky, so I routed these around the framing to where there will be outlets and switches.

I set about fitting the ply face which will become the walls surface. To finish off I fitted the framed doors. French doors all seem to come in there frame using the same drop pivot hinge. Due to the head height, the doors are too tall, so trimming 3" or more off is required. So it's a case of removing the internal rails and refitting them, once the door has been trimmed to the desired height.

The kitchen was next on the list. I say kitchen but with no running water, a plug hole that empties into a bucket and no more than a square metres worth of worktop, makes a great place to wash pots and cook food. I have no idea why they had tiles on the wall?

Grabbing a pry bar and a series of hammers I set about ripping out the sink and unit. Moving the cooker first of cause.

Not trusting the concrete base had any damp proofing we head off for another ordeal at Bricó to find something that would do the job. Before we went we discussed how my client would like the kitchen and measure up. The kitchen style chosen is called Juda.

The cow pack walls are not really ideal for fixing units or tiles to. Plastering the walls isn't the best idea and with the irregular texture causing many measurements to take into account, we decide battening the wall for plaster boarding would take far too long to keep everything square and plumb. The only way would be to strip off the cow pack in strategically picked areas, treat and stabilise the wall then dot and dab the plasterboards on.

There is a raised slab of concrete where the old kitchen used to sit. Luckily this is of a perfect size where the plinth will hide the raised part and the edge of the flooring. We bitumen this area, prepare the walls for the plasterboard and install where there will be kitchen units or worktops installed.

With reasonably square and plumb walls, we plumb pipes for the taps and washing machine. The copper pipe sizes in Britain are 10,15 and 22mm. In France 8,10,12,14mm and so forth. Anything speedfit is made of copper and costs for one, what you would pay for a packet of here in England. 9€ for one 14mm straight coupler. As you can imagine at that price everything was brazed.

The weather in France at this time of year isn't much different from English weather. It's sunny with rain. The day we pick to tackle installing the kitchen units was a nice warm day. I set up outside to assemble all the wall and base units. There is no real difference here. All the fixings and methods are the same as ones we use in England. The base units compile of one 1000mm which will be the sink, one 400mm and a 600mm oven unit. Before plasterboarding we prepped the cables behind to where the oven will be. The hobs are gas. As there is no gas supply, my client plans to use gas bottles. To hide the gas bottle he wanted some sort of larder next to the oven. This has two functions as it will also hide the boiler.

The first part of the kitchen is in an L shape. This is to fit the washing machine under and for a place for the kettle and toaster. The legs we brought from Frances B & Q (Bricó) seemed to have some part missing that makes the legs height adjustable. The shed being some distance we decide to use the leg and look for the missing parts next time we are there. The language barrier seemed to hinder us somewhat if things like this popped up. For the mean time I run up a spacer block so the worktop has support.

The wall units are next in line. Drilling holes in these walls are very hit and miss. Sometimes you hit a hard spot that just kills the drill bit without a centimetre of depth. Some parts are so soft any wall plug won't stay tight and stable. It's hard to find a good decent spot. Taking this into account I think trying to get holes where we need them to hang the units is far too risky and somewhat impossible. To move forward I size up some 15mm ply to attach to the wall where the units are to hang. Screwing this to the wall would be tricky so I just "pepper pot screw" the board onto the wall with lots of builders adhesive. To prove the point on how hard some parts of the wall can be, I'm using my 6kg Rotary Stop SDS+ impact hammer drill (The type that double as a jack hammer). On one screw hole the bit hits a very hard spot which stops the drill bit instantly, the energy then transfers into the drills body twisting it and my hand, forcing me to let go. The quite heavy drill jumps up into the air and lands on the freshly fitted hob handles, smashing them. This did hurt and strained my hand, so we had 5 minutes and a drink, reflecting on much worse this could have been. You can see in the picture the mark the drills chuck made before it jumped out the hole. Anyway we continue until I'm happy there is enough support for the board to take the weight.

After fitting the wall units, I run up the melamine base unit which will become the larder unit to hide the boiler and gas bottle. To the right of this we fit another worktop up to where the fridge freezer will live. The larder doors will be done later. As these are a custom size ill have to make these myself.

The Wall units are two 800mm and one 400mm which leaves a gap wall side. To fill this the clients eyes light up when I mention a wine rack. Using the left over melamine I run up a simple wine rack and fit.

With floor tiles to lay, we plan to lay them early in the morning then have a trip out to give the adhesive time to set. Again, I don't like the idea of the concrete floor not being damp proof so first I mix up adhesive and lay down a thin bed. I then press down a damp proof sheet. All the tile adhesive we use is rapid set and flexy. Tiling directly onto the DPC in case any of the adhesive blows due to damp. This works as the sheet keeps the strength in the top layer. Laying the tiles are quite easy other than around the stairs, at some point I end up through the stairs. It's just a large area with the kitchen, bathroom and entrance being tiled. In total from mixing for the DPC bed to laying the last tile and grouting, it's taken around 4 hours. Leaving the afternoon for a trip out and a spot of lunch.

We draft the sparky in to install the consumer unit and some light and power to a barn. We shouldn't laugh but, he turned up and placed some sharp looking steps directly onto the nice new tiled floor and lent them onto the nice new worktops. The funny part was while he was wiring the consumer unit, his steps gave way, he grabs onto the live consumer unit and gets a little shock. Well he threw the ladders across the room, mutted something in an angry french manner and stormed off to the barn. Then, while moving the ladders, he knocked the light he had just installed back off.

French electrics are a mine field. No ring mains, all radial circuits and just about everything has to be wired to its own trip. As you can see the picture is of the consumer unit. This is for an open planed 2 bedroom very small cottage. 3 RCD's. Each room has to have its own trip for lights and sockets. The fridge has to have its own as well as the washer. The cable they use is horrible to work with. Its round very stiff outer flex makes it difficult to get around corners.

I wasn't too impressed how the bathroom walls had been erected. Basically they had used 18mm plywood screwed to a ceiling joist and screwed to the floor using angle brackets. Where the boards butted up to each other was a gap. I trust everyone there but I did have my partner with me and felt for her modesty while using the bathroom. With such flex in the walls, keeping tiles on would be near impossible.

I explained to the client that females may feel nervous if they noticed a gap. The walls wouldn't stand the test of time and tiles would fall off. Also anything screwed to the walls wouldn't have enough support and screws would poke out causing a danger.

So we head out for some timber, fixings and plasterboard. As the bathroom had been fitted I didn't want to rip the walls out. I placed nail plates up to the current walls and fixed them down with framing fixings. I then wrapped the structure with its new frame, making an effort to place noggins where the bathroom suite or other items need to be fixed. He again liked the idea of using insulation to which we laid before boarding over. I then screwed the old wall onto the new wall and fixed all the suite correctly.

Time coming to an end we get on with little jobs. Tiling the kitchen, fetching materials and appliances.

While we were there this little fella came to say hello. I have no idea what type of lizard it is and was the only one we saw. I came out to mix some adhesive and noticed it on that piece of wood.

Below are some pictures I have taken whist in Morlaix.

Continue to 2008 ...........